News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1887-07-07
A STUDENTS ROOM AT CAMBRIDGE, M

! A STUDENTS ROOM AT CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
/ in Farnham at New Haven, or in Weld Hall
| at Cambridge. Each student has a suite; and
n suite consists of sitting room, bedroom, and
'gyp" room. The ''gyp" room is the pantry
| in which are kept the dishes and other utensils
necessary for the serving of meals i'll the rooms.
All meals, excepting dinner, are thus served
Dinner is eaten in the large dining hall of each
college at six or seven o'clock. The American
sys en- of college housekeeping seems to me
preferable. In point of health, neatness and
economy it is better. But in the English
college as i'll the English home, breakfast and
lunch are much lighter repasts than i'll the
American college and household. The old
Slzar system has quite passed away. The stu
dent no longer demands mental services of the
lower classmen, but has his own hired servant.
In the English schools, as Eton and Rugby,
however, L judge that tagging is not yet obso-
lete.
Among the students rooms which we visited
were those occupied by Sir Isaac Newton John
Harvard, Thackeray, and Macaulay: Thack-
erays and Macaulays are opposite, on the
ground floor near the chapel of Trinity, and
NcwtOn's are on the second floor directly
above. On the tagging between the chapel
and his room Macaulay was wont to walk to
and fro, book in hand, and his nephew and
biographer says that if there be one place
where his spirit may be supposed lovingly to
inger, it is in this spot. Stories of the great
historians college days are still told. A niche
is seen in his sitting-room which was once a
window opening on to the street. Through 1t
young Macaulay, whose heart was as big as his
head, was accustomed to admit the gated
student, and thus allow the wanderer to reach
his room. The authorities finally discovered
this mode of eluding their vigilance, and
walled up the entrance. The great historian,
it is also told, was no more fond of going to
prayers than most college men. He said he
could lie in his bed, SO near was he to the
chapel, and join il, the singing and responses.
The libraries at Cambridge are large and
numerous. The University library contains
four hundred thousand volumes. Each college
has also its own collection, smaller, yet con-
sisting, rs in the case of Trinity of hundred
thousand books. The libraries impressed me
rather as storehOuses than workshops. The
University library is not open to students be-
fore they have taken their first degree; the Ii
brary of each college alone is available for its
students. American colleges are constantly
making tn ir libraries more accessible and
more useful. Men are doing much work
among the books. using them for the study of
q subject as q historian uses his authorities
The growing custom is more than admirable
Similar privileges | saw offered in the Univer-
sity of Edinburgh, though less ample than
Harvard gives her students. No such advan-
tages appear to be provided in the English
Cambridge. The cost of administration of
the library of Trinity College is not 1.-THE of
the administrative expenses of the Harvard
library. The University library, however, pro-
vides those who have the right to its use with
excellent opportunities for the consultation of
works upon any subject. We are, happily,
learning in the United States that libraries
are not designed for keeping books, but for
using books, not for preserving them from
spot and blemish but for putting them into
so many hands that their bindings wear out
in year; not for limiting the times and sea-
sons in which students may use the books, but
for granting every possible privilege which
can minister to intellectual and moral prog
rcss.
If the interests of American colleges bear a
more intimate historical association with Cam
bridge than with Oxford, it is in Emanuel
College that these interests eliminate. For it
was from that Puritan seed-plot that sprung
the large majority of the learned men who
came to New England before 1910. Founded
,in 1884 by Sir Walter Mildmay, it was Puritan
from the laying of its cornerstone. 1t defied
Papistical notions and forms. The chancel If
its chapel faced westward, and its kitchen oc-
cupied the eastern portion. 1t attracted the
best and freshest Puritan blood of the time.
1t trained generation of men who crossing
the seas, started the American church and the
American college i'll a noble course of piety and
culture. Among them was John Harvard, who
by the JONATHAN of his library and a few hun
dred pounds placed 'the college at Newtowne"
(od name for Cambridge, Mass) on what has
proved to be an enduring foundation. John